A round up in September could spell the end for a small herd of wild horses out West. Why that matters more than you think: a tale of bureaucracy and special interests, horse meat and hot flashes, and wrongs that
wouldn’t be that hard to right.
wouldn’t be that hard to right.
Moments before September 11, 2001 turned into “9/11,” my cameraman, Norris, and I were driving into the Pryormountains along the Wyoming / Montana border to film a short segment for National Geographicon a wild horse round-up. I fiddled with the radio dial, trying to catch a few snippets of early morning NPR before the signal was swallowed by the scenery. Something about a plane hitting a building in NY…details still sketchy. Then static.
We didn’t really think too much about it. It wouldn’t have been the first plane to fly into a building there. New York has a history of bizarre accidents: car-swallowing sink holes, water main geysers, gravity-prone construction cranes. Things are constantly crashing and breaking and exploding and toppling in the Big Apple. That’s news?
Besides, we were traveling in a landscape so vast and ancient, so full of mythic drama, everything else fell away. We settled into our insignificance, staring out the window, trying to figure out how one endless vista managed to segue into the next. Yet in the stillness and eternity of that clear blue morning, we were surrounded by evidence of sudden, violent destruction: massive boulders strewn about like so many pebbles, gullies where water had once raged, trees scarred by lightning, twisted by wind.
We didn’t really think too much about it. It wouldn’t have been the first plane to fly into a building there. New York has a history of bizarre accidents: car-swallowing sink holes, water main geysers, gravity-prone construction cranes. Things are constantly crashing and breaking and exploding and toppling in the Big Apple. That’s news?
Besides, we were traveling in a landscape so vast and ancient, so full of mythic drama, everything else fell away. We settled into our insignificance, staring out the window, trying to figure out how one endless vista managed to segue into the next. Yet in the stillness and eternity of that clear blue morning, we were surrounded by evidence of sudden, violent destruction: massive boulders strewn about like so many pebbles, gullies where water had once raged, trees scarred by lightning, twisted by wind.
